OF SIAM 41 



too, perhaps half the town and the surrounding 

 country is under a foot or more of tide-water. 

 Yet the larger half of Bangkok's four hundred 

 thousand citizens lives on land, though the easiest 

 means of travel throughout much of the city is by 

 boat, and in fact, half of it is reached in no other 

 way. The Siamese woman of the lower class daily 

 paddles her own canoe to the market ; or, if of the 

 better class, she goes in a " rua chang," the com- 

 mon passenger boat which, together with the jin- 

 rikisha, the land hack throughout the Orient, is 

 included among the household possessions of every 

 Siamese who can afford them. 



The native city has a surrounding wall nine feet 

 thick and twelve feet high, and but a single street 

 where a horse and wagon can travel. For the rest, 

 the streets are no wider than needed for passing 

 jinrikishas, and at least one of them, Sampeng, 

 is too narrow for comfort— even for such traffic. 

 Most native thoroughfares are mere passage ways, 

 trails ; for the Siamese by virtue of their swamp- 

 like lower country travel single file, first by neces- 

 sity, afterwards through habit. 



Sampeng is a street of character; it is the Bow- 

 ery of Bangkok. It is a continuous bazar from 

 end to end, with many alley-like tributaries, lead- 

 ing, for the greater number, to open-air theatres, 

 or to large crowded rooms where natives squat to 



